Love and Loss
by Silver lily 010
Summary: The moment when Will dies. From Brother Zachariahs point of view


Love and Loss

A The Infernal Devices fanfiction

A short drabble of feels for when Will dies. From Brother Zachariah's point of view. My inspiration for this was a depressing violin song I found on Youtube. Quite fitting if I might say so myself.

~Lily Silver~

No one was able to fix her. The girl was truly broken. And Brother Zachariah knew why. He too felt like some part of him had been ripped out. He was a Silent brother and was not supposed to feel anything. Feelings were something he had become immune to, or so he thought. Over the years he had thought himself building up immunity to this moment. But it hurt none the less. To watch her cry, watch part of her die? It made his insides twist and warp even worse. She had loved the boy lying in the bed. And loved him now. Brother Zachariah stood by the bed and tried to reach out to the mind of the man, but felt only cold silence great him. For a moment he felt fear gasp into his heart. A heart that was supposed to only beat faintly. But now, it beat fully, and it was burning up his veins.

The girl was crying. She was on the floor and bent over the end of the bed. She was squeezing the hand of the man lying on the bed, mumbling about how he can't die. The mans' hair was grey, but his face still shown with that boying playfulness that had glowed from him in his youth.

Zachariah remembered, he would always remember when the man on the bed was young. When he was alive with sarcasm and had called Zachariah brother. Zachariah remembered how the man had once been a boy. A boy with so much love in his heart, but that he couldn't share. Yet he had gifted that love to two people. A girl named Tessa who now cried for him, and a boy named Jem. Zachariah remembered the boy, all pale, like the ghost of Zachariah's past. He looked back on those years. When the boy had been cursed to live with his own death sitting in a silver tin. The pale boy with the hair like strands of silver and hands as soft as silk who would play violin to the moon. Zachariah remembered the boy, but knew that he existed only deep within the recesses of the body that now stood tall over the body of the dead man named Will and the eternal woman named Tessa.

Brother Zachariah would always remember what it was like to be the frail boy made of white light. He would remember what it had felt like to run through the streets of London with the wild boy named Will. He would remember the feeling of loving that boy more than his own self. He would once have given his life to protect that boy. But Zachariah could no more stop death, than he could stop the girl who cried.

He knew her tears would forever stain his soul. He would remember the feeling of watching the woman, who was once just a girl, lose something that meant just as much to her, as his had meant to the boy named Jem. Parabatai love was something only a rare few Shadowhunters felt, but the love that the eternal woman and the Herondale boy shared, was something that no creature, human or not, would ever feel. The boy Jem had once hoped to feel this love, but his illness had taken him away from her before he could give his heart to her. He had believed to tie himself to her, but fate had taken him away first. The illness drove him to a fate worse than death. He now stood over his friends, the people he loved more than his own self, in a body unknown to them, and silently sent a prayer to The Angel.

He stood, silent as the statue of The Angel, and internally acknowledged the pain he felt. The pain that would break the rules of The Silent Brothers, and he let it tear at his veins and fracture his heart. He felt the hollows that were his eyes, and felt the tears that could not escape, no matter how much they tried.

He turned and walked to the dresser. On it sat a violin case, one that had once sung to the moon and calmed the soul of a dying boy who wore silver and held his heart out for an eternal girl, and a broken boy. The silver boy reached through the body of Brother Zachariah, like the spirit of the past, and with the utmost gentleness and care, picked up the precious item. He brought it to his chin, feeling the solidness of what used to calm his mind, and soothe his broken soul, and began to play. The sound was somber, and seemed to break through the barriers of the Silent Brothers teachings, and there stood Jem. In the body of Zachariah.

He played for the love of his life, Tessa, and he played for the loss of his brother. Of the boy named Will who turned into the man that now lied cold on the bed. The man's own soul seemed to hover in the room. And the two broken souls of the girl named Tessa and the boy named Jem greeted their friend, in the music that rained down. The eternal woman cried and the Silent Brother played. Their souls both entwined in loss.

William Herondale was gone, but would forever live on in their hearts, minds, and souls.

For eternity was the price they paid to live just a fraction of time with that boy.

Jem remembered the feeling of loving that boy. Loving him through his cruelty and through his lies. He would remember that rambunctious pain for the rest of eternity. Would remember the image he saw now. He would never forget when the girl named Tessa listened to the boy named Jem play the violin for the last time. He was Jem. And she was Tessa. And they loved Will.

He put the violin down after what seemed like an eternity. And that eternity would follow them for their own eternities. This is what it felt like to love someone so much that their death killed a part of you. Jem reached out and held Tessa. He held the girl he loved. And as she cried he felt the tears break through. And he cried as well. He cried in a way only the Brothers knew how. No tears came, but they flowed out from his soul into the room that encased them in this small eternity. No words would be shared today. No stories of triumph or glory. Only silence would fill the room. Silence and an endless river of love that caressed the two people.

Jem held onto his Tessa, and promised one day, to find the cure that would bring him back to her. He may have never said it to her, not even in her mind, but they both knew that he would find her. She would not be alone forever. He would live in his eternity till he could come find her again.

And as he left the Institute he knew, tomorrow she would wear white, even though she was forbidden to see his funeral. Jem knew that no matter how much he loved Will, his brother was gone from this life. He probably sat in heaven now, alone, where he would never be joined by the Eternal Girl or The Silent Brother.

As Jem watched the eternal girl walk out in her mourning white, he felt himself fade out. Jem was leaving and it was time for Brother Zachariah to say his goodbyes. He would take the body that was once William Herondales' to its rightfully earned place in the City of Bones.

As he stepped up into the carriage he turned to watch Tessa Grey watch from her balcony on the Institute. The white paled her skin, and showed the sleeplessness that surrounded her eyes. He prayed in that moment, that her pain was finite and would soon be healed.

And he left. He turned and left her. And it hurt him. It shredded at what was left of his heart and tore at his soul. He would always regret leaving her there.

He would always regret leaving them.


End file.
